News

When saltwater fish long ago evolved to live in fresh water, many of them also evolved a more sophisticated hearing system, including middle ear bones similar to those in humans.

Two-thirds of all freshwater fish today — including more than 10,000 species, from catfish to popular aquarium fish like tetras and zebrafish — have this middle ear system, called the Weberian apparatus, which allows them to hear sounds at much higher frequencies than most ocean fish can, with a range close to that of humans.

California is the global center of technological advancement. A recent panel of researchers from Berkeley Social Sciences and other scholars convened last week at the Social Science Matrix to discuss how the rise of powerful tech entities and the rapid diffusion of new technologies across the state is reshaping society.

The “California Spotlight on Tech Authoritarianism” event panelists discussed the implications of these advancements, the undermining of democratic processes and the expanding frontiers of tech authoritarianism.

The Social Sciences D-Lab recently launched a new program to prepare postdocs to lead research and teaching that emphasize equity, cultural relevance and ethical practice in data science. 

In partnership with the Berkeley School of Education (BSE) and the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), the two-year Berkeley Data Science Education Fellowship provides three postdocs with monthly skill-building workshops, teaching opportunities and multidisciplinary research opportunities. 

The pinnacle experience for many UC Berkeley undergraduate students is the spring commencement ceremony. Wearing their cap and gowns, thousands crowd California Memorial Stadium, the Golden Bears’ historic home, to mark the beginning of a new chapter.

UC Berkeley Economics and Haas Professor Jonathan Kolstad is a pioneer in using AI to solve one of the most complex challenges of healthcare: human decision-making. 

His work moves beyond simply automating tasks to improving the choices that patients, and even doctors, make every day. From navigating the confusing world of health insurance to making decisions in the emergency room, Kolstad's research explores how AI can act as a partner to help us make better, more informed choices for our health.

"Life and art are entangled," says UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë. "An engagement with an artwork is an engagement with oneself."

The UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science is pleased to announce the 2025 recipients of the inaugural L&S First-Year Pathways Course Enrichment Grants. 

Co-developed by UC Berkeley's William Boos, an artificial intelligence-based weather model delivered a timely prediction of a stalled monsoon this season, helping farmers decide when to plant their crops.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing weather prediction around the world, as evidenced by the successful prediction this spring of a delayed onset of the monsoon in northeastern India.

Nine years ago, when Long Le-Khac was a newly minted Ph.D., he hit a research roadbump. He’d planned to use data analytics to map the various settings featured in Asian American literature, testing a hypothesis that this fictive geography had become increasingly international. But first, the computer would need answers from him: Of all the literary works in the world, which ones should it include as “Asian American” in its analysis?

America is awesome at science. For as long as most of us have been alive, United States scientists have published more research, been cited more often by other scientists, earned more patents, and even won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation.

In recent years, UC Berkeley’s Political Economy program has seen notable growth not only in student interest, but also in alumni involvement. A key force behind this momentum is the Political Economy Alumni Advisory Board, established seven years ago to strengthen the program’s sense of community, improve student professional outcomes and demonstrate the broad range of careers that a political economy degree can support.

As every bodybuilder knows, a deep, restful sleep boosts levels of growth hormone to build strong muscle and bone and burn fat. And as every teenager should know, they won’t reach their full height potential without adequate growth hormone from a full night’s sleep.

But why lack of sleep — in particular the early, deep phase called non-REM sleep — lowers levels of growth hormone has been a mystery.

MCB is pleased to welcome our newest graduate students to the department! Learn fun facts about their favorite model organisms, childhood career aspirations, and more. 

Psychology transfer student Mariano Vincent Salvador never imagined seeing himself at UC Berkeley. The 27-year-old was once academically dismissed from Diablo Valley College (DVC) with a 1.6 GPA. Now he’s thriving as an A-student at UC Berkeley. 

Salvador’s arduous academic journey began at DVC as a college student who didn’t understand the value of learning and was unsure about his future. This led to academic struggles, probation, and eventually, his dismissal because of low grades and a lack of academic units completed. 

This fall, incoming assistant professor of ethnomusicology Chris Batterman Cháirez is teaching the course Music, Movement and Migration in Latin America.

Economics Professor Ted Miguel was featured in an article in The New York Times.

Of every 1,000 children born in Kenya, 32 don’t make it to their first birthdays. Study after study has explored how to improve those staggering numbers, in Kenya and elsewhere.

The number of unhoused individuals in the U.S. reached a record high of 770,000 at the end of 2024 (Porter 2024). Homelessness policy remains a source of vehement partisan debate. Some argue that homelessness is, in fact, a housing problem, with permanent housing solutions required to help those most in need. Others argue that those who are chronically unhoused must have issues that go beyond lack of affordable housing; instead, untreated mental illness and substance use are often at the heart of the problem. Should homelessness policy target housing or mental health treatment?

After finding his footing at UC Berkeley as a sophomore, Steve Suda came to love the energy, diversity and people that made campus feel like home. Decades later, his connection to Berkeley remains strong. 

As a political economy graduate, Suda now gives back to Berkeley by serving on advisory boards, mentoring students and encouraging fellow alumni to support the university’s mission. Through his involvement, Suda hopes to give current students the support they need to thrive.

Robin Lakoff, a distinguished linguist and professor emerita at UC Berkeley, died on Aug. 5. She was 82.

Lakoff joined the Berkeley Linguistics Department in 1972, after teaching at the University of Michigan from 1969 and earning a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard in 1964. As an accomplished young professor tenured in her early 30s in a male-dominated academic world, she paved the way for future female scholars. 

On a sunny summer morning in Sacramento, Janet Mendoza-Partida was walking from her office at the California Department of Education along tree-lined streets to the state Capitol, a thoughtful young woman explaining why she feels divided between two worlds.

Her parents are Mexican immigrants who raised their children in Watsonville — her father a farmworker, her mother a childcare provider. Even a few years ago, before starting studies at UC Berkeley, Mendoza-Partida said she could not see far beyond the agricultural community where she grew up and dreamed of being a teacher.

This article from The New Yorker features Saru Jayaraman, founder of the UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center; Michael Reich, an economics professor and David Card, an economics professor and Nobel laureate.

In a small oil painting village in China, artists create replicas of famous works of art. After spending six years there, UC Berkeley Professor Winnie Wong’s ideas of art and those who make it dramatically changed.

In this Berkeley Talks episode, economist Gabriel Zucman discusses how wealth inequality and billionaire wealth has soared in recent decades, prompting the need for a global minimum tax of 2% on billionaires. 

The former ambassador, philanthropist and businessman was a champion of UC Berkeley students in need and of a free and open exchange of ideas on campus. 

AI platforms like ChatGPT are widely understood to be sophisticated prediction machines. Trained on vast troves of content ranging from news articles and books to film scripts and Reddit posts, they anticipate the next most likely letters and words when prompted. While their responses can give the impression they’re sentient thinkers, that sci-fi scenario hasn’t yet panned out. 

UC Berkeley has launched one of its first major partnerships in the fast-growing quantum computing industry, joining forces with Switzerland-based company YQuantum to advance cryogenic hardware essential to next-generation quantum computers.

Mary K. Gaillard, a theoretical physicist whose calculations of the properties of new elementary particles helped validate the Standard Model of physics in the 1970s, died on May 23 of natural causes at her home in Berkeley. A UC Berkeley professor emerita of physics and faculty senior scientist emerita at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, she was 86.

“Dick Tracy” got an atom-powered, two-way wrist radio in 1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it.

The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola’s research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone. Cooper rejected AT&T’s wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with “a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.”

UC Berkeley’s influence traverses the globe, and thanks to the Judith Stronach Travel Seminar, its creative scholars can as well.

This past November, art history professors Zamansele Nsele and Ivy Mills led a group of six graduate students to Senegal for an immersive, nine-day trip to the 2024 Dak'Art Biennale — a major art exhibition that showcases contemporary African art every other year.

Behind the scenes of NSF’s CIQC is a powerful story of workforce development: mathematicians without any prior exposure to quantum science are emerging as leaders in a rapidly expanding field, thanks to a training model that’s both rigorous and deeply interdisciplinary.

Armando Lara-Millán was about to join hundreds of polished, modified and brightly colored cars in Sacramento when the back windshield of his new lowrider flew onto the highway.

Lara-Millán’s destination was the third annual Lowrider Holiday Celebration where cars like his lined four blocks of Capitol Mall Sunday afternoon. Without a windshield, Lara-Millan went from participant to spectator.

“It’s all good,” Lara-Millán, an associate professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, said. “It’s all part of the game.”

Allison Harvey knew she’d have to study hard when she enrolled in an 11-week course on parenting techniques earlier this year. A UC Berkeley professor of psychology who researches memory, habits and sleep, Harvey printed her notes and meticulously completed each week’s homework. She engaged with the instructors, who were also well-respected clinical psychologists. And she was far more engaged than her classmates, including her husband. 

According to the U.S. Census, only 14% of single mothers earn a bachelor’s degree in the United States. Mia Magaña Kelly refused to be just another statistic. 

As a single mother who worked and attended college full-time, Mia overcame tremendous adversity to earn a sociology degree and a minor in psychology from UC Berkeley this month. Enduring domestic violence and teen motherhood amongst other challenges, Mia discovered a community at Cal, a world-class university she never in her wildest dreams thought was possible.

Political Science Administrative Director Serena Groen received Berkeley Social Science’s Distinguished Service Award for her outstanding work in her department. 

Leading a team of 12 staffers, Groen’s efforts help achieve political science’s goals and create a more inclusive and supportive environment for faculty, staff and students.

Karla de la Cruz’s path to UC Berkeley was neither linear nor easy. For much of her life, she didn’t even think going to college was a possibility for her – let alone walking the stage at the world’s top public university. She was raised by a single mother who worked long hours as a farmworker in rural Northern California, and few students in her community had the support necessary to go to college.

There’s a word UC Berkeley comparative literature Ph.D. student Frank Cahill will never forget. He misspelled it as an eighth grader in the second round of the live televised Scripps National Spelling Bee finals. 

Michael Temprano is continuing a family tradition having graduated on Sunday with a bachelor's degree from the UC Berkeley Sociology Department. As the third Temprano sibling to join their mother in earning a sociology degree from UC Berkeley, Michael's academic journey is a powerful testament to how education, family values and social consciousness can intersect to shape a future rooted in change.

Nihar Nuthikattu’s initial interest in Section 230 was kindled by following U.S. congressional hearings that included testimony from CEOs at major technology companies. A junior majoring in data science and economics at UC Berkeley, Nuthikattu said he was struck by “the stark asymmetry in technical acumen between lawmakers and digital platforms.” 

Two distinguished UC Berkeley graduates have been selected as Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, joining a distinguished cohort of 84 new scholars representing 25 countries.

Berkeley Geography Professor Clancy Wilmott is conducting innovative research on the political stakes of mapping in its digital and physical forms. 

Masha Vtorushina, a graduating senior studying Chinese Language and Global Studies in the College of Letters & Science, and Justin Hurley, a 2021 Political Economy graduate, have been named 2025-2027 Yenching Scholars.

UC Berkeley’s Social Sciences Division recently celebrated its faculty and staff at Social Sciences Fest, an annual gathering dedicated to recognizing the remarkable contributions and accomplishments of the Berkeley Social Sciences community. 

Berkeley Social Sciences Dean Raka Ray welcomed guests by first acknowledging the current challenges facing higher education, while commending faculty and staff for remaining dedicated to Berkeley’s core values during these uncertain times. 

By Jessica Park

Asian American Studies alumna Betty Duong’s time at UC Berkeley fostered free thinking and honed in the skills she uses today as a Santa Clara County supervisor. Cal opened her world to diverse perspectives, helping her realize that anyone could participate in political and civic engagement. 

Imagine a Slushee^TM composed of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice. Now picture these ice-encrusted slushballs, dubbed “mushballs,” raining down like hailstones during a thunderstorm, illuminated by intense flashes of lightning.

Planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, now say that hailstorms of mushballs accompanied by fierce lightning actually exist on Jupiter. In fact, mushball hailstorms may occur on all gaseous planets in the galaxy, including our solar system’s other giant planets, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Eleni Berg is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of nature, immigration, consumerism, and indigeneity.

Berg spoke with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony at a recent open studio event for MFA (master’s in fine arts) students. At the time, Berg was hosting a workshop where visitors were sculpting clay filled with native seeds.

UC Berkeley African American Studies Alumna J Finley began her career researching reparations and the legacy of slavery. But after studying how Black people navigate and resist oppression, she was eventually drawn to a subject – and a form of resistance – that was personally meaningful to her: comedy. As someone long drawn to comedy shows, Finley committed herself to collecting and honoring the stories Black women tell about themselves by becoming an audience member, critic and comedian herself.

UC Berkeley Geography students, faculty and alumni were recognized for their groundbreaking work in the field of geography at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG).

At its core, Michael Burawoy believed the science of sociology was, even when encased in the stodgy halls of academia, a study of possible solutions to improve the world. As such, it was natural for theories from the profession to be used to advocate for social change. 

Not all of his colleagues believed sociologists should be personally on the picket lines or protesting. 

But Burawoy was different because that’s exactly what he was doing toward the end of his life. 

This article originally appeared on April 1, 2025 at Division of Arts & Humanities.

UC Berkeley's College of Letters & Science is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 L&S Faculty Awards. This distinguished award recognizes each awardee's exceptional scholarship, service to the College and community, and transformational teaching. These extraordinary individuals not only embody the excellence of the College of Letters & Science, but they also serve as an inspiration to the entire campus community. The recipients will be honored at a private ceremony on Wednesday, May 14.

In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley rhetoric professor Winnie Wong visited Dafen village in China, where artists painted replicas of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. It dramatically changed how she thinks about art and those who make it.

When Winnie Wong first saw Dafen Oil Painting Village in 2006, it was nothing like she’d imagined. 

As she nears graduation at UC Berkeley, ASUC President Shrinidhi Gopal is hopeful the initiatives she implemented — such as expanding student accessibility and engagement — will leave a lasting impact on Cal students. With just a few months remaining in the academic year, Gopal, a senior double majoring in economics and data science, is focused on assuring that the proposals she has put forth receive approval and continue to thrive long after her graduation.

In the 2024 book, nominated for The Story Prize, English Professor Fiona McFarlane tells 12 short stories that look past a serial killer's crimes and focus on the lives of those still living.

Photo design by Neil Freese/UC Berkeley

It is widely believed that receptive listening, or demonstrating openness to someone’s point of view, is key to political persuasion. 

But a new study co-led by UC Berkeley Political Science Professor David Broockman suggests that signalling receptiveness during a persuasive conversation may not be as important as previously thought. 

Editor's Note: The work of UC Berkeley Social Sciences faculty helps shape California public policy. In this series, learn more about their research and projects and how they resonate with state policymakers and address solutions to the most pressing issues facing California, from food access to homelessness.

After graduating from Cal with a double major in political science and rhetoric in 1982, Walter Brown went straight to law school and has been practicing law for the past 40 years. While he has supported UC Berkeley in various ways since then, he realized last year that he wanted to give back more meaningfully. 

Few plants are more celebrated in Egyptian mythology than the blue lotus, a stunning water lily that stars in some of archaeology’s most significant discoveries. Researchers found its petals covering the body of King Tut when they opened his tomb in 1922, and its flowers often adorn ancient papyri scrolls.

The career coaching and mentorship provided by the UC Berkeley Social Sciences Career Readiness Internship Program (SSCRIP) helps students like political economy major Uzair Pasta explore their interdisciplinary interests and prepare for diverse careers after graduation.

Economics and Cognitive Science junior Pilar Capdevila gravitated towards the UC Berkeley Social Sciences Career Readiness Internship Program (SSCRIP) seeking mentorship and valuable industry insights. The program prepares Social Sciences students for meaningful careers through professional development training and paid summer internships. 

On the campaign trail, President Trump made his promise to drastically slash immigration a rallying cry. Since taking office, he’s issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at achieving those goals, from ending birthright citizenship to freezing funding for refugee resettlement and migrant legal aid organizations. 

Inspired by UC Berkeley Professor Frances Hellman and started at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, the Hellman Fellows Fund(link is external) provides much needed support to pre-tenure assistant professors who have served for at least two years. Established in 1995, the Hellman Fellows Program has since expanded to include all ten UC campuses and a handful of private institutions. 

Have you ever seen letters from the 1800s? Aside from the pristine penmanship and grammar, the way friends expressed their fondness for each other is remarkable.

“Letters sent between friends are often full of the kinds of loving and affectionate language that today we would only associate with romantic or sexual relationships: ‘My darling,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I can’t wait to be near you,’” said UC Berkeley historian Sarah Gold McBride, who in 2022 created the course, Friendship in America, with Berkeley anthropologist Christine Palmer. 

UC Berkeley’s Men’s Swimming and Diving Team has won its first ACC Championship, with several Berkeley Social Sciences students on the team, including Economics student Robin Hanson (Swimming/Free/Fly/IM); Psychology students Colby Hatton (Swimming/Free), Hank Rivers (Swimming/Breast/Free/IM) and Jacob Soderlund (Swimming/Breast); and Political Economy student Jack Alexy (Swimming/Free/Back), who also picked up a win in the 100 freestyle.

The UC Berkeley Social Sciences Career Readiness Internship Program (SSCRIP) was designed to equip students with the practical knowledge and real-world experience they need to succeed in their future careers. Nohemi Aguilar, a senior who is majoring in sociology and pursuing a human rights minor, is already seeing the program's impact after her first semester.

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Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves — so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) — emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

UC Berkeley Psychology alumna Britt Sellin says the social science theories she learned as a Berkeley Social Sciences student — such as researching how people think and behave — have been essential to her 30-plus-year career as a human resources leader in the tech industry.

In a world overflowing with choices — from what to eat for breakfast to which career path to pursue — decision-making has become an ever-present obstacle for most. Research from UC Berkeley’s Department of Psychology has demonstrated a new way that people can overcome this obstacle, by changing the way they approach their decisions.

Stephan and I met in 1989 as undergraduates at UC Berkeley’s Social Sciences Division, just before the destructive Loma Prieta earthquake struck. It’s an easy anniversary to remember.

He was a political science major, and I was studying history. Stephan had plans to attend law school, but I was uncertain about my path after graduation. People often asked me, "What will you do with a history degree?" Back then, it seemed like people assumed history majors could only go into teaching.

Studying the physics of atomic particles takes a lot of room. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the biggest particle accelerator, is in a ring tunnel 27km (17 miles) long buried about two football fields deep underground. It serves as the factory, or artisanal manufacturer, of bespoke subatomic particles like quarks. But where is the design studio for these rare particle models?

The past decade has seen historic challenges for U.S. democracy and an intense focus by scholars on events that seem to signal democratic decline. But new research released today (Dec. 17) finds that a bias toward pessimism among U.S. political scientists often leads to inaccurate predictions about the future threats to democracy.

My Brilliant Friend, by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, is the New York Times’ No. 1 book of the century. This recognition, and the recent adaptation of Ferrante’s four-novel Neopolitan Quartet into an HBO series, underscores this writer’s profound influence. 

Looking back on another outstanding year, Berkeley Letters & Science has compiled “24 L&S Highlights of 2024”—a recap of news, events, and announcements from the L&S community this year. Here are just a handful of the many stories demonstrating the extraordinary work of L&S students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Enjoy!

Milestones & Research

Watch this video to learn how biologists like Victor Ortega Jiménez use high-speed cameras to record fascinating slow motion footage of animals in the wild.

Ellin and Ned Purdom grew to appreciate astronomy later in life. Neither took astronomy courses in the 1970s while at UC Berkeley, where the two met. Now, they look forward to the Department of Astronomy’s Evening with the Stars lecture every year, and in February, the couple pledged $500,000 and a portion of their estate to advance student access and diversity in astronomy.

Over the past few years, raging wildfires in Italy have become a common and deadly occurrence. In Southern Italy, intense, record-breaking heat waves and dry scirocco winds create the perfect conditions for wildfires—both natural and coordinated. 

Claire Marie Stancek, L&S alum and English professor, speaks about her book, wyrd] bird.

While Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been a constant feature of the planet for centuries, University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered equally large spots at the planet’s north and south poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random.

This story originally appeared on research.berkeley.edu on November 6, 2024. 

Editor’s Note: Berkeley Social Sciences faculty are turning their research into action, tackling Oakland’s most urgent challenges — from public safety to affordable housing. In this 3-part series, learn how they are partnering with the community to create lasting and meaningful change by addressing concerns from residents. 

For a long time, Berkeley’s African American Studies department had a vision of increasing the scope of the department’s work outside of the classroom and into local communities. 

Tell us about you.

Richard Chan was hosting a Hong Kong dinner with other UC Berkeley alums when he heard a startling fact: the state of California covers just 14 percent of the public university’s budget. Chan, a serial entrepreneur and investor, decided to investigate how his skills could be of service to his alma mater.

Niklaus Largier is Chair in the department of Comparative Literature, is a professor in the departments of German and Comparative Literature, and is affiliated with the Programs in Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.

There’s a scene in Pixar’s hit film Inside Out 2 when teen Riley, the human protagonist of the Inside Out world, senses that one of her 13-year-old friends isn’t telling her everything. The audience zooms in to Riley’s mind, where her emotions are trying to figure it all out. Disgust is on top of it. She pulls up a screen and starts examining Riley’s friend’s furrowed brow. “Enhance,” Disgust barks, as the view pushes into the telltale corrugator muscle that controls our eyebrows.

It is common knowledge that the human gut is home to hordes of bacteria, most of which seem essential for good health. But there is another component of the gut microbiome that receives less attention: viruses.

For UC Berkeley Political Science graduate student Dinah Lawan, April 14, 2014, was a night she will never forget. Lawan went through the terrifying ordeal of being a kidnapping victim of Boko Haram, and later escaped to pursue higher education in the U.S.

Today, as she works towards her doctorate to help those suffering in conflict zones, Lawan recalls how the kidnapping changed her life forever.

In this first-person narrative, Yesenia Ochoa, a first-year student at UC Berkeley, tells UC Berkeley News about her experience being a student from a migrant family and her educational aspirations.

“I grew up in Yuba City. My parents immigrated there from a little village on the side of a hill called Las Estacas in Michoacan, Mexico, when they were 23. They work in the fields — agriculture is a huge industry in the region — so they leave really early in the morning to harvest peaches, walnuts, tomatoes, almonds, almond fields, things like that.

Raised in farming communities, Adriana P. Ramírez is keenly aware of the challenges migrants face on a daily basis and the struggles they encounter with the U.S. immigration system. The UC Berkeley Sociology graduate student, who is a Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) Fellow, wants to raise the visibility of these challenges and help find solutions to obstacles migrants face when they return to Mexico.

Editor’s Note: Berkeley Social Sciences faculty are turning their research into action, tackling Oakland’s most urgent challenges — from public safety to affordable housing. In this 3-part series, learn how they are partnering with the community to create lasting and meaningful change by addressing concerns from residents. 

As many traditional approaches to Oakland’s complex issues continue to be ineffective, the city is in need of innovative solutions that address the real needs of its residents.

“Altruistic” doctors who prioritize patient care over income and profit achieve dramatically better health outcomes with older patients, a finding that has powerful implications for U.S. health care systems and policies, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.

The research, published today in JAMA Health Forum, found that when thousands of Medicare patients were treated by such doctors, they were far less likely to need preventable hospital admissions and emergency room visits. In addition, the patients’ annual medical payments were nearly 10% lower on average.

UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public university in the U.S and the eighth-best university in the world, according to the Times Higher Education’s 2025 World University Rankings, released on Oct. 8. Berkeley has held the ranking of top U.S. public university for nine of the past 10 years. 

What role do the humanities play in a world challenged by climate change, rising authoritarianism, censorship, racism, wars and collapsed economies?

The humanities and their forms of historical, visual and cultural literacy are critical to understanding and addressing the human experience and the planet’s survival, says Sara Guyer, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities in UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science.

It may not seem like UC Berkeley Social Sciences alumna Sandra Lo's Ethnic Studies degree directly relates to her 25-year career in tech. But she says much of the knowledge, communication skills and ability to think critically she gained in this field at Berkeley Social Sciences have been essential to her success in the tech industry.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by David Baker, a biochemist who received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1989 working with Randy Schekman, a professor of molecular and cell biology who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

From a hard-scrabble pioneer apple farm in Boulder Creek, California, nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Carla and Renata Hesse’s great-aunts planted the seeds for their family’s extensive ties to UC Berkeley. Spanning four generations and more than 100 years, 10 members of the Hesse family have earned degrees from Berkeley, including eight in the College of Letters & Science. 

This fall, UC Berkeley’s College of Letters & Science launched its first-ever L&S Staff Achievement Awards to recognize and celebrate outstanding Letters & Science staff members. Awardees were selected for their exceptional commitment to the College’s shared mission of teaching, research, and public service. Each of these individuals has excelled in areas such as collaboration, goal accomplishment, inclusion & belonging, innovation, and mastery of their work, and their steadfast dedication and hard work serve as an inspiration to the entire campus.

Meet Neil Gali, Administrative Associate at the Interdisciplinary Social Science Programs (ISSP) and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at UC Berkeley. Neil has been instrumental in managing a wide range of tasks, from office logistics to ASE hiring, while contributing to a collaborative and vibrant office environment. Through his diverse experiences across campus, Neil has cultivated an impressive skill set and continues to support both students and faculty in meaningful ways.

At first glance, Amissa Anima: A Book of the Dead looks like a traditional hardback volume. Open the cover, however, and you find something unexpected: a kit for contacting the dead.

This fall, two UC Berkeley centers are gearing up for the election by hosting a variety of events to help others make informed voting decisions. The Institute of Governmental Studies (led by Sociology Professor Cristina Mora and Political Science Professor Eric Schickler) and Social Science Matrix (led by Sociology Professor Marion Fourcade) have partnered in various events and panels spanning over the next two months that will cover the national and state implications of this election year.

UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Dacher Keltner was awarded the Association for Psychological Science's 2025 APS Mentor Award in recognition of his exceptional mentoring, and innovative research on compassion and awe, cultural influences on emotion and the dynamics of human hierarchies and power abuses.

Fareed Zakaria GPS takes a comprehensive look at foreign affairs and global policies through in-depth, one-on-one interviews and fascinating roundtable discussions.

On the September 2, 2024 episode: Reengineering Life: The Next Frontiers in Science

Fareed examines two emerging technologies that are already changing life as we know it—CRISPR gene editing and artificial intelligence—in interviews with two women who pioneered them: UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li.

Berkeley Social Sciences has welcomed 17 new faculty for the 2024–2025 academic year, including new professors of psychology, sociology, economics, gender and women’s studies, history, political science, linguistics, African American studies, geography and demography.

They bring insight, expertise and dedication to the Social Sciences. Learn more about them here

In Berkeley Talks episode 208, three UC Berkeley professors from a wide range of disciplines — psychology, biology and ethnic studies — broach a deep question: What is understanding?

Professor Joshua Simon Bloom first joined the Astronomy Department in 2005. By then he had already bounced between the US and the UK, between the ivy-covered brickwork at Harvard and the sun-drenched courtyards at Caltech, and there would still be many career ricochets to come before he landed in the Chair’s desk at UC Berkeley. In 2020. Just as the pandemic lockdown was unfolding. Perfect. He ran the department during COVID the same way he aims to in all the projects he leads: by striving to provide the best tools and right support so that everyone involved can do their best work.

Over the course of nearly five months in 2022, NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples from Mars that could rewrite the history of water on the Red Planet and even contain evidence for past life on Mars.

But the information they contain can’t be extracted without more detailed analysis on Earth, which requires a new mission to the planet to retrieve the samples and bring them back. Scientists hope to have the samples on Earth by 2033, though NASA’s sample return mission may be delayed.

UC Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik studies how children learn. She also studies artificial intelligence systems. That might sound counterintuitive, but as she explains in this video about her work for UC Berkeley News, there’s much overlap between what we are learning about how babies explore the world and how we might create better AI systems.

Top philosophy graduate students from around the world are finding their way to UC Berkeley thanks to a recently established fellowship that enriches the discipline with new approaches.

The fellowship honors Carol Lee Price, a Berkeley alum who led a curiosity-driven life. Price was born in Cleveland to a Jewish family that emphasized education as an object of value that no one could take away. Whenever she moved, she took the knowledge she had gained with her.

Shrinidhi Gopal, a senior majoring in economics and data science, is the incoming president for UC Berkeley's undergraduate student government.

We are saddened to share the following news from our department of African American Studies:

Twenty Berkeley Social Sciences students and alumni are going for gold at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games. They are competing for 12 countries and one city in seven sports.

Michael Yartsev, an associate professor of neuroscience and bioengineering at UC Berkeley, is the campus’s newest Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, the HHMI announced today.

The plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film, Rope, is a disturbing one:Two men in their shared apartment strangle a former classmate to death. Then, they host guests — including the victim’s family — at a dinner party. It’s an attempt to prove their superiority by committing the “perfect murder.”  

Although the killers — Brandon and Phillip — live together, it’s never acknowledged openly that they’re a couple. (At the time, the Motion Picture Production Code prohibited the depiction of “sex perversion,” which included homosexuality, on the big screen.) 

UC Berkeley History and Law Professor Dylan Penningroth began his journey in academia after receiving his bachelor’s degree in history from Yale and his Ph.D. in history from the Johns Hopkins University. Throughout his career at Berkeley, Professor Penningroth has taught, mentored and inspired countless undergraduate and graduate students. 

Political Economy graduates. Photo by Emily Yang.

Ten years ago, Johnny Smith sat in a prison cell with no hope and no future. And that’s when he decided to dream big and "reinvent" himself. 

Mellony Palma, a Berkeley senior majoring in Sociology, was recently selected for Berkeley’s Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Underrepresented Students for her efforts to help young children and adults navigate the foster system. The award honors individuals whose work betters the lives of those in underrepresented communities. 

Somdeng “Danny” Thongsy knows what it’s like to be dealt a bad hand in life.

A refugee from Laos, he grew up in a tough neighborhood, living in poverty and surrounded by gangs. His brother was murdered when Danny was a teenager. This led Danny to commit a serious crime that landed him a 27-years-to-life sentence in state prison.

This first-person narrative was written from an interview with Daniella Lake, who will graduate this May with a degree in media studies.

Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms that can edit your DNA.

UC Berkeley History Alumnus Jefferson Cowie, who is a history professor at Vanderbilt University, was awarded a prestigious 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship

Standing on Asilomar State Beach just west of Monterey, Marius Castro talked with dozens of his fellow UC Berkeley students for hours under the moonlight. The moment felt special to Castro, like he was in a movie. In actuality, he was attending the first annual MPS Scholars retreat.

Six UC Berkeley researchers have been elected 2023 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.

The honorees, announced today (Thursday, April 18), are among 502 scientists, engineers and innovators recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

When Nathanael Stephen Payne ’23 was developing Wrestle with Jimmy for UC Berkeley’s “Introduction to Playwriting” class, he had no idea where the project would take him. His answer came several years later, when he crossed the stage at graduation as one of two students to receive the Larry Belling Promising Writers’ Award.

Rich Lyons, an established economist, former dean of the Haas School of Business and the campus's current leader for innovation and entrepreneurship, will become the next chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, the UC Board of Regents announced today (Wednesday, April 10).

Some companies discriminated against Black applicants much more than others, and H.R. practices made a big difference.

Focusing her research on the effects of monetary and fiscal policy on the economy, Chancellor's Professor of Economics Emi Nakamura brings her distinguished academic background to UC Berkeley’s Department of Economics.

An extensive CO2 monitoring network set up around the San Francisco Bay Area by an atmospheric chemist from the University of California, Berkeley, has recorded the first evidence that the adoption of electric vehicles is measurably lowering the area's carbon emissions.

UC Berkeley’s African American Studies (AAS) Department launched a groundbreaking project this week with a $100,000 Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Banned Scholars Project is a direct response to increasing restrictions on academic freedom, particularly in the fields of critical race theory, DEI and gender studies. It was spearheaded by AAS professors Michael M. Cohen, Tianna S. Paschel and Ula Taylor; department chair Nikki Jones; and managed by staffer Barbara Montano.

In 2013, the University of California, Berkeley, debuted a course to teach undergraduates the tricks used by scientists to make sense of the world, in the hope that these tricks would prove useful in assessing the claims and counterclaims that bombard us every day.

It was launched by three UC Berkeley professors — a physicist, a philosopher and a psychologist — in response to a world afloat in misinformation and disinformation, where politicians were making policy decisions based on ideas that, if not demonstrably wrong, were at least untested and uncertain.

UC Berkeley Psychology Professor and former Department Chair Serena Chen began her almost three decades journey in academia after receiving her Ph.D. in social psychology from New York University. Throughout her long tenure at Berkeley Social Sciences, which began in 2000, Professor Chen has taught, mentored and inspired countless undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to shaping the lives of her students, Chen has produced new knowledge in the field of self-compassion and authenticity.

Neutrinos and antineutrinos are nearly massless particles produced in many nuclear reactions, including the fission of uranium in nuclear power plants on Earth and the fusion reactions at the core of the sun.

But they are devilishly hard to detect — most pass through Earth without stopping — making it difficult to study the nuclear reactions taking place at the core of stars or in stellar explosions or to monitor nuclear power plants for illicit production of bomb material.

A UC Berkeley-led study revealed that disparities in the share of Black and Latino students admitted to America’s elite colleges and universities have endured and even widened over the last 40 years. 

The UC Berkeley Women in Leadership Circle (WILC) is a vibrant and supportive community committed to empowering alumnae of Cal who are in leadership roles across various sectors. At the heart of WILC's mission are the core values of democracy, equity, inclusion, mentorship, and networking. Through monthly activities, workshops, and networking events, WILC fosters both personal and professional growth, encouraging members to reach new heights.

Many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, are characterized by the accumulation of protein clumps, or aggregates, in the brain, which has led scientists to assume that the protein tangles kill brain cells. The search for treatments that break up and remove these tangled proteins has had little success, however.

The Women in Leadership Club (WILC) at UC Berkeley is a forerunner in empowering the next generation of female leaders. Established in 2019 to bridge the gender gap in leadership roles, WILC provides a dynamic platform for ambitious women to hone their leadership skills, foster professional growth, and advocate for gender equality across various industries.

Each fall and spring, a cohort of UC juniors and seniors embark on an academic journey to the epicenter of American politics and culture: Washington, D.C. The UCDC program provides students from all majors with the unique opportunity to study and learn in the nation's capital, where they engage in internships, research endeavors, and academic coursework.

For our next interview, I will be speaking with Professor Atreyee Gupta of the History of Art Department. Professor Gupta’s area of focus is on Global Modernism, and Modern and Contemporary South and Southeast Asian art.

As the battle to control what students read continues in K-12 schools across the country, policies backed by U.S. legislators have contributed to a recent rise in the banning of books that include the history and experiences of people of color.   

One of the most explosive volcanic eruptions ever witnessed by humans took place 3,600 years ago, around 1,600 B.C.E., off the island of Santorini in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The unique underwater kelp forests that line the Pacific Coast support a varied ecosystem that was thought to have evolved along with the kelp over the past 14 million years.

But a new study shows that kelp flourished off the Northwest Coast more than 32 million years ago, long before the appearance of modern groups of marine mammals, sea urchins, birds and bivalves that today call the forests home.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment, whose authors include UC Berkeley Georgraphy Professor Tianna Bruno, is the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks and responses.

In Berkeley Talks episode 186, a panel of UC Berkeley scholars from the College of Letters and Science discusses the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in academia — and the questions and challenges it requires universities and other social institutions to confront. 

Astronomy students who grew up building telescopes for backyard stargazing sessions could hardly find a better instructor than Jessica Lu. An associate professor in the Department of Astronomy, Lu studies black holes and helps design adaptive optics that sharpen images taken with major telescopes like the one at the Keck Observatory in Hawai‘i.

This year, Lu began her first stint as astronomy chair, a role she accepted with surprise.

Peihang "Marshall" Li ('23, Political Economy) and Vishwaa Sofat ('24, Political Science and Science, Technology & Society) have been named as 2024–2025 Schwarzman Scholars and will be heading to Tsinghua University in Beijing in Fall 2024 to enroll in a fully fund

The shimmering green, red and purple curtains of the northern and southern lights — the auroras — may be the best-known phenomena lighting up the nighttime sky, but the most mysterious are the mauve and white streaks called Steve and their frequent companion, a glowing green "picket fence."

Ethnic Studies student Angelica Garcia shares her story of why studying at Berkeley Social Sciences is so unique. 

David Henkin, professor of history, speaks about his book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are.

In this interview, David Henkin recalls his experience collecting and conducting research for his book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are. Henkin's book explores the emergence of the "natural" ordering of weeks, revealing how our current devotion to the weekly rhythms emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States. 

Dozens of documentaries about cults are currently available on Netflix, Hulu, and Max, along with countless podcasts on Spotify, Apple, and other platforms. What's driving this trend? What's behind our collective fascination with communities and spiritualities that offer total belonging and total enthrallment?

Most birds that flit through dense, leafy forests have a strategy for maneuvering through tight windows in the vegetation — they bend their wings at the wrist or elbow and barrel through.

UC Berkeley Professor Dave Wahl and Quaternary Paleoecology Lab researcher Marie Champagne co-authored a new paper in Science titled "Independent age estimates resolve the controversy of ancient human footprints at White Sands," which rewrites the history of humans in the

Samantha Lewis, Ph.D., UC Berkeley assistant professor in cell biology, development, and physiology, has been honored with a $500,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)

Michal I. Shuldman has returned to her alma mater here in Integrative Biology Department at UC Berkeley. She began her role as Assistant Teaching Professor in July 2023. As a graduate student in the Dawson Lab, she examined the influence of ecotypic variation in response to heatwaves in California native shrubs. She has expertise in plant ecology, plant ecophysiology, soil science, and stable isotopes.

Congratulations to assistant professors Lilla Balint (German), Fumi Okiji (Rhetoric), and Nathaniel Wolfson (Spanish and Portuguese) on being named 2023 Hellman Fellows(link is external)!

The standard story of the peopling of the Americas has Asians migrating across a land bridge into Alaska some 14,000 years ago, after Ice Age glaciers melted back, and gradually spreading southward across a land never before occupied by humankind.

But the claim in 2021 that human footprints discovered in mud in what is now New Mexico were between 23,000 and 21,000 years old turned that theory on its head.

The culture and spirit of innovation at UC Berkeley throughout history can be seen in the changemakers — the Berkeley students, researchers, entrepreneurs, faculty members and alumni — who have helped in countless ways to improve our lives and our world.